West Ham have qualified for the knockout stage of the Europa League despite a late own goal by Tomas Soucek that led to a 2-2 draw at Genk on Thursday.
The Hammers now lead the standings with 10 points from four games in Group H, and two remaining to be played. They are four points ahead of Dinamo Zagreb who beat Rapid Vienna 3-1.
The Irons need another win to guarantee to win the group H and thus avoid the Champions League knockout round. They have two more games with one home game against Dinamo Zagreb in December at the London Stadium with one more away trip to Austria to face Rapid Vienna.
Third placed Genk on 4 points and fourth place Rapid Vienna on 3 points can no longer qualify for the next round of the European competition.
This season’s Europa League has been revamped with the eight group winners moving through automatically to the last 16 while the eight runners-up will go into a playoff round with the teams finishing third in their Champions League groups.
This unsavoury incident leaves me feeling sick to my stomach!
I’m of the opinion that the offenders do not represent what our club stands for.
During the match I heard a section of the crowd singing our national anthem, of course there’s nothing wrong with our anthem per se, but when a few extra words are included it takes on a slightly sinister tone, I hope that the people responsible are identified and banned from obtaining tickets going forward.